The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

Only one of the seven British regiments which left Canada with Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne in 1777 could make the claim that its soldiers had fought on April 19, 1775.  This was the 47th Regiment of Foot - "a Very Fine Regiment" .  If this designation sounds familiar, it's how the regiment was described when inspected in 1772, and is the title of Paul Knight's "very fine" book by the same name. It seems appropriate to  write about the 47th again , as we approach the 249th anniversary of the fighting at Lexington and Concord, after having now read Knight's book, and as a group of dedicated reenactors now portray  the grenadier compan y of the regiment. Knight's book includes chapters on the history of the regiment, its officers, men and women, the training it received, and its service in North America.  Other reviewers have described the book as requiring a slow, deliberate read, which makes sense given the amount of information it contains.  Hav...

April 19, 2023, is 248th anniversary of the first battle of the American Revolution, fought at Lexington, Concord and along the British retreat to Boston.   This is a good time to look at those regiments of the British Army which made up a substantial part of the Convention Army, including one that fought on what has become "Patriots Day" in Massachusetts.   An online summary of the fighting at Saratoga in 1777 states that defeat of "the superior British army" was crucial to the United States winning the Revolutionary War.   What would have made the British army superior in the Saratoga campaign?  Although Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's forces outnumbered the garrison posted at Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence in July of 1777, numerical superiority was lost as the campaign progressed.  At the time of the surrender, Burgoyne claimed he faced 16,000 Americans with an effective force of only 3,500 troops. [1]   Burgoyne's troops...